Instagram, Vine, and the evolution of social media

Today, Facebook announced it will let users take and share short videos by way of Instagram, its photo-sharing app. This feature will likely compete with Twitter’s popular new short video application, Vine.

Social networking has grown faster and changed more than any other internet activity during the lifespan of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Let’s look at the facts:

In a survey last year, we found that 46% of internet users post their original photos and videos online, and 41% curate photos and videos they find elsewhere on the internet and post on image-sharing sites. This is where Vine and Instagram’s new video service fit in.

Overall, 56% of internet users do at least one of the creating or curating activities we studied and 32% of internet users both create and curate online content. The creators, or those who post original photos or videos tend to be younger. The curators, or those who take photos or videos that they have found online and repost them on sites designed for sharing images with many people, tend to be women and younger adults.

During this time of social media growth, there was another set of tools evolving: mobile. As of May 2013, 91% of American adults have a cell phone, and 34% of American adults own a tablet computer. And now, for the first time, more than half (56%) of the American population owns a smartphone. This change has been directly tied to the evolution of pictorial side of social media because smartphones come with cameras and enable easy sharing of pictures and video.

Of course, the Instagram video-sharing announcement will not be the last word on social media’s evolution. In the coming years, we envision asking questions about adoption of wearable tech, like Google Glass.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.